Outside Found School Bus Conversion Tour

Welcome to the Outside Found Bus Tour! We started this project in October of 2014, worked on the bus from March – July 2015, and have been on the road since then. The following is a tour of the completed bus. If you want to start at the beginning, visit our Bus Restoration Journal!

A quick note before we begin – the links on this page are mostly Amazon Affiliate Links. If you’re working on your own bus and find this helpful, we’d sure appreciate it if you would use these links to make your purchases so we can get a little kickback. Thanks in advance!

The bus is a 2001 GMC BlueBird. We chose an old bus as our starting point for many reasons, the biggest being how affordable it was (only $5500!) and how much interior space we’d have (almost 200 square feet!) We worked for months before we actually built anything, planning and laying out our interior.

The Entryway

When we aren’t driving the entryway functions as our mudroom. With durable coin-grip flooring and plenty of easy to access storage, all manner of people hopping in and out is no problem. The driver’s seat is the original seat that came with the bus, recovered with an IKEA slip cover to match the rest of our cushions. More on that later! The light switches you see here run our 12 volt LED rope lights and outdoor LED Floodlights.

The entryway – we repainted & added storage in Spring 2016.

Driver’s Area – fan & tiny dash cam.

The Living Room

The living room, right behind the driver’s area, is a wonderful multifunctional space. On the left we have a very comfy couch with integrated storage underneath. On the right we either have open floor space (great for a big dog who likes to stretch out!) or a cute flip up dining room table.

Update April 2016 – new curtains!

New curtains up – pretty low profile!

New curtains down – great for keeping light from leaking out at night.

Our pantry! Fits just enough food for the two of us and also serves as medicine cabinet.

The Office

The office is situated across from the kitchen so that the floor space inbetween can be monopolized by whatever activity is at hand. When we’re cooking, there’s enough room for two people to comfortably work together. When we’re working, we can stretch out and feel like we’re in a “real” office space. The dining room chairs double as our office chairs – when we’re driving, they stay in the desk stalls. Burly rubber feet keep them from sliding!

The office is also home to our solar power readouts. That’s right – the bus electrical is powered 100% by solar! Check out this post about living with solar for more info on our setup.

The Bedroom

The “bedroom” looks like little more than a walled in mattress, but functionally it is so much better. The bed is a comfortable 6″ memory foam mattress, complete with fluffy down comforter and pillows. Above sits our library, nestled in some floating IKEA shelves. Below lives a ton of storage and our Atwood forced air heater (for those chilly fall mornings!)

In front of the bed are two drawers for our day to day clothes, one for me, one for Will. More on clothes / laundry over here…

The Bathroom

The Garage

This is definitely the coolest room on the bus. Not only is it bright and covered with stickers, but it’s full of all of our favorite things: mountain bikes, backpacking, climbing, and kayaking stuff, and all of our outdoor goodies.

That’s All!

All in all, we can fit quite a lot into our little 200sq ft bus! If you have questions, ask them in the comments below and we’ll be sure to get back to you.

Alyssa jumped head first into outdoor sports when she quit her job at a successful tech startup to hike the John Muir Trail in 2013. Afterwards, she convinced Will to join her in starting a consulting company. He was game, with one condition: they move from Mountain View, CA to Boulder, CO. In Boulder they fell in love with mountain biking and trail running and realized that as long as they had internet, they could work from anywhere. Thus, the bus idea was born, and after a few months of hard work renovating the 2001 GMC BlueBird, they started living the dream of traveling full time while still maintaining "adult" careers. Thanks for following along on our adventure!